Thinking about supply - some proposals

[DeathDaemon]

The AI always seems to be starving when attacking my non-farmland provinces. I guess they use less important units that are thereby more expendable to stupid things like starvation. I'd love to see supply increased... I love caelum but a cold-3 and lots of archers and the like make for a starving empire. I learned with the jotuns to use more undead than living, but their undead is obviously better than most undead.

[HotNifeThruButr]

The root of the problem lies in their preference to generally crappy hordes. If they used more elite units, they wouldn't need as much supplies.

Edit: by "more elite units" I meant "less elite units instead of more garbage units"... you get the point.

[ April 16, 2004, 22:35: Message edited by: HotNifeThruButr ]

[Kel]

Making supply 'easier' has a lot of ramifications on the balance of the game.

It particularly affects the balance of:
1) Nations/pretenders with nature magic
2) Nations which have unusual supply issues (Ermor, Jotun)
3) The value of the supply items themselves (depending on which miplementation you use)
4) All non-eating units (constructs, lifeless, undead, etc.)
5) The value of supply provinces vs. magic site provinces (ie. farmlands vs. wastelands)

That's a lot of balance changes.

- Kel

[Chazar]

I like the supply mechanisms as they are, although I'm usually play Caelum and are always starving...so I usually take growth1 or 2 and the wizard's tower, which I can built quickly at my front lines to give me the supplies I need (200 per Tower).

Sure, I still need some of these Bag of Wines, but I'd rather think that this item is broken, and not the mechanism itself. Supplies should prevent people from amassing troops for too long - and I think that this is a pretty useful idea! Otherwise one amasses a big army only, since it is usually better to attack with a big force instead of a lot of attacks with smaller armies. The supply-mechanism makes you pay for this advantage...

These are just my thoughts. In the essence all I'm saying is that supply is meant to be annoying ;-)

[Tuna-Fish]

Originally posted by Chazar:
since it is usually better to attack with a big force instead of a lot of attacks with smaller armies.

No offence, but that argument is fatally flawed. A player who attacks with lots of small armies can very quickly strip another that is using only 1 or 2 big ones from gem and gold income, effectively knocking him out.

If my enemy cannot anticipate my assault, I will attack with very many armies that are as small and cheap as possible and that can still take out expected province defence and a little more. These armies should preferably be flying, or use wind ride/whatever so you can take as many provinces as possible from the enemy in the first blow so he will be poorer when he will counterattack and so that it will take him very many turns to reach the front. Only after you already have the land go for the armies.